Bachmann’s Political Evolution : Childless Couples to Family Formation

Iowa’s Favorite Daughter Michele Bachmann has announced her candidacy for President.

As such, many of her past statements and actions are being reported … sure many of her claims have been proven – shall we be kind and say – misleading … PolitiFact evaluated 23 claims and determined that only one was completely true … coincidentally, 23 seems to be a number of significance as Ms. Bachmann’s claim of “raising 23 foster children” is now being questioned … … soon everyone will know about the other aspects of her life from Bachmann Family Farm (complete with taxpayer subsidies) to her stepsister, Helen LaFave, a lesbian.

Yet, for many Minnesotans, Ms. Bachmann gained attention while in the state legislature as the state’s most visible champion of a Minnesota Constitutional amendment which would ban same-sex marriage, civil unions and other legal equivalents.

“It’s not a political issue; it’s a moral issue, it’s a cultural issue, and it’s also an issue of governance,” Ms. Bachmann said in 2005.
“Essentially it comes down to this: Will the people of Minnesota be able to decide the rules that they live under?”

The stories of Ms. Bachmann hiding in the bushes outside the State Capitol during a gay-rights rally and Pamela Arnold, a 5-foot-tall lesbian who caused Ms. Bachmann to scream out, “Help! I’m being held against my will!” when Ms. Bachmann was in the lavatory, have been well documented in The Daily Beast profile.

Soon, the digging will include Ms. Bachmann’s earlier activist roles protesting abortions … including a stint as a sidewalk counselor and her 1991 claim that she was “since 1973, I have been a landlord of an abortion clinic” as public dollars were used to construct a hospital whose services included performing abortions.

Opposition to abortions and same-sex marriage are not uncommon … but Ms. Bachmann actually went further during her Minnesota State Senate career in which she attacked childless couples.
Why ?
As Matt Taibbi in the July 7, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone recounted Ms. Bachmann’s religious foundation : “The Lord says: Be submissive, wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.”

Somehow, to Ms. Bachmann it is not only her duty to protect the unborn but to chastise married women who either could not conceive, or choose not to have children.

Ms. Bachmann statement was disgusting to many Minnesotans and so it was not a surprise in July 2005 when the Republican Senate Caucus removed Ms. Bachmann as Assistant Minority Leader in charge of Policy.

Today, Ms. Bachmann does not talk about childless couples … instead her focus is on implementing a tax system that would encourage “family formation”.
Ms. Bachmann (in this recent video) discusses her ideas … presenting a clear stance that either tax credits or lower tax rates should be available to married couples as opposed to single mothers.
One has to wonder with New York becoming the sixth state to recognize same-sex marriage, would those favorable tax treatments be available only to heterosexual couples ?

Ms. Bachmann has become politically astute … she recognizes that rewarding “family formation” can garner more support than chastising childless couples, yet for those that feel government should not be interfering in our personal lives, why does Presidential-candidate Bachmann want to use government tax policy to promote her religious position ?
To paraphrase Ms. Bachmann, “Essentially it comes down to this: Will the people be able to decide the rules that they live under?”
No, Ms. Bachmann, having children is “not a political issue” … its a personal issue … for every family … be it a family of one … or a family created through a same-sex marriage … or a hetrosexual marriage.

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